Microsoft Wanted To Whack Dell?

[HardOCP News]

C|Net is reporting on an alleged e-mail exchange that occurred over a couple days in November 2002, that Microsoft said they should ”whack Dell” over it’s Linux dealings.

"We should whack them, we should make sure they understand our value," wrote Paul Flessner, a senior vice president in Microsoft's server applications unit. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar

 

[Gorankar]

Some how, I just don't see Bill going Soprano's on anybody, let alone one of MS's biggest customers.. "Whack Dell" Hilarious..

If you read the whole article, it is all ado about nothing..

 

[HaMMerHeD]

It was 4 years ago....Quite a bit has changed in Microsoft since then.

 

[FalseGod]

I think he meant it in the sense of whack them up side the head for not bowing down to how wonderful Microsoft is rather than as in take Dell out.

 

[Evil]

Wish Microsoft would have Dell sucks.

 

[mikeblas]

Wow; it's pretty creepy reading that subpoenaed email with so many guys I used to work with (well, work for, really!) involved in it. It was always my nightmare that something I wrote would get pulled into a court case like this. Sometimes, I'm quite amazed that the company can continue to do business while having to worry about all the scrutiny and misinterpretation that this cnet story demonstrates.

 

[Fooshnik]

Four years ago and I still don't understand their value.

 

[Manny Calavera]

Allot of the People who work for MS are arrogant pricks,if this to be believed.

 

[thedude42]

I read a few accounts of the environment in Redmond, particularly the difference between a Microsoft employee and a Microsoft contractor. Mostly it was about how as a contractor, you get treated like a second class citizen, but the one thing I found most interesting in the editorial was an observation made concerning contractors aspiring to be Microsoft employees.

The account I read went something like this: Contractor talks with others around the water cooler about some new technology he was reading about and experimenting with, from windows to mac to linux to iPod projects, how cool all this stuff is, advantages one has over the other, etc. As a contractor, this person has an open view of all the technologies for what they are.

Then one day the contractor gets a job offer to be a full time Microsoft employee. From that point on, everything is windows, everything is Microsoft, everything else is playing second best or catch up to the glory and technical innovation that is Microsoft.

From the account I read, part of the job offer to contractors includes a lecture on the product line and loyalty to the company, which apparently includes never thinking that any one else has any technology even close to yours. This sort of "group think" mentality is placed as a condition of your continued employment, stated in so many words as a condition of the job offer. The idea is that as a contractor, you're hired labor and your opinion doesn't matter to Microsoft. As an employee, you are now Microsoft, so you better act like it.

From what I understand, this is where the whole persona of arrogance comes from in Microsoft employees, and its root cause stems from monkey boy Balmer, who apparently isn't heald in the most high regard by current employees (not like how Bill Gates still is respected to this day).

In 2002 before the antitrust cases globally had really made an impression on how Microsoft should be doing business int he global economy, a lot of this attitude could be seen in corporate communication, but now I wouldn't be surprised if there are notifications on every computer that say something to the effect of "please refrain from discussing opinions or concepts related to any other product besides something Microsoft, unless there is a purely technical or interoperability issue that needs to be discussed."

Come to think of it, maybe the issue with Microsoft employees using gmail instead of their Microsoft exchange mail addresses has something to do with this kind of thing as well....

 

[xX_Jack_Carver_Xx]

The rumor I heard was.... they take the soon to be employee to a special room, where he/she is instructed to take a nap.

When they awake, they are like a new person

I think Nicole Kidman was filming a movie about it recently

 

[mikeblas]

Allot of the People who work for MS are arrogant pricks,if this to be believed.

And you can make such a conclusion about 70-something-thousand employees by reading an email exchange involving eight or ten? That's pretty impressive!

From the account I read, part of the job offer to contractors includes a lecture on the product line and loyalty to the company, which apparently includes never thinking that any one else has any technology even close to yours.

Who knows where you read this, but in my (nearly) fifteen years there, I've never heard of such a thing. I have heard, though, of people bending the dogfooding concept out of shape and assuming it means that only Microsoft products are to be studied.

This sort of "group think" mentality is placed as a condition of your continued employment, stated in so many words as a condition of the job offer.

My employment contract includes no such clause.

 

[jstnomega]

If INTENT is enough to put one on the wrong side of the law, then whether or not anyone was actually harmed is irrelevant and the use of the term "whack" can only be seen as hostile or threatening.

 

[Pkirk618]

then i can go to jail for "whacking" off? go figure.